In order to solve the current economic crisis we need to put many unemployed and/or underemployed people back to work rebuilding small/medium-sized towns, farms, villages, and hamlets. There are hundreds if not thousands of small to medium-sized towns across the USA with declining populations that could be revitalized with an influx of people in to them (from America’s overgrown cities) which would revive local/regional markets. People keep cramming in to cities/suburbs (major metro areas) where the employment market is vastly over-saturated and this only serves to exacerbate employment problems.

Small and medium-sized farms which surround towns and villages should be re-started to provide employment opportunities and secure America’s food supplies for the future. We should also work to revive local/regional factories and artisan shops in towns and cities, rebuilding America’s domestic manufacturing base. There are far too many paper shufflers in the American economy and as such we must begin to revive key hands-on industries – agriculture, manufacturing, focus on long-term ecological sustainability, etc – which actually produce things locally and regionally. The USA manufactures more than it ever has yet industry/manufacturing has become so overmechanized that one machine now does the work that dozens (even hundreds) of people used to do by hand; as such, we may also need to begin to de-mechanize certain manufacturing sectors in order to provide more jobs, i.e. begin to make and produce more things by hand as in the past (artisans of yore like the local butcher, baker, and candlestick maker) instead of relying too much on machinery in far away places.

This economic crisis and only be solved by de-centralization, re-localization, and re-regionalization of people, industry, artisanry, manufacturing, and especially agriculture. In a mature American market facing the typical and predictable capitalistic crisis of overproduction, oversupply, and overmechanization (along with almost total agricultural and industrial monopolies), so called ‘green collar jobs’ are the only way to fix the current mess now and in the coming decades/centuries.

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Cousin Charles’s feeling about the depression is that it serves the “industrialists” right. He pointed out in a magazine article seven years ago that the present trouble with the country was that the cities were getting overgrown – Megalopolis, as Spengler calls it. Strange that it should have been left for a German to diagnose our American disease. But the effect of the depression should be salutary, because it ought to make the government get rid of the high tariff and send people back to the land. There’s always a living on a farm – and he himself has been a dirt farmer, not a white-collar farmer. – http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/White/anthology/tennessee.html

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Even the apologists of industrialism have been obliged to admit that some economic evils follow in the wake of the machines. These are such as overproduction, unemployment, and a growing inequality in the distribution of wealth. But the remedies proposed by the apologists are always homeopathic. They expect the evils to disappear when we have bigger and better machines, and more of them. Their remedial programs, therefore, look forward to more industrialism. … Opposed to the industrial society is the agrarian, which does not stand in particular need of definition. An agrarian society is hardly one that has no use at all for industries, for professional vocations, for scholars and artists, and for the life of cities. Technically, perhaps, an agrarian society is one in which agriculture is the leading vocation, whether for wealth, for pleasure, or for prestige-a form of labor that is pursued with intelligence and leisure, and that becomes the model to which the other forms approach as well as they may. But an agrarian regime will be secured readily enough where the superfluous industries are not allowed to rise against it. The theory of agrarianism is that the culture of the soil is the best and most sensitive of vocations, and that therefore it should have the economic preference and enlist the maximum number of workers. – http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/White/anthology/agrarian.html

All over the USA and in many other post-industrial nations there is environmental blight and ecological devastation found nearly everywhere, especially in many cities and suburbs.

Thus I propose that we engage in a long-term phase of ‘constructive destruction‘ wherein we tear down very many of the old, useless, and decrepit buildings, shuttered factories, decaying neighborhoods, and so on and put better things in their place or even return those areas to natural greenspace. Luckily this is occurring in some areas of the USA, but not at nearly a quick enough pace. This will serve to create many jobs, since it would take literally decades to remove, rebuild, and/or retrofit many of the old buildings and areas which were rashly built in the last 100+ years of mass-industrial fervor.

For instance, if we take an old factory which has been closed down for decades, a building (or buildings) which is nothing but an ugly scar on the landscape that attracts crime and creates pollution: we could employ dozens if not hundreds of people to descend upon the site and tear the old factory down, being very careful to fully recycle any potentially reusable materials. After the process of destroying/dismantling the site is finished, local/community planners could be employed to find various ways to re-utilize the newly opened up space. If there is no need for new industry or jobs in the area, the site could simply be turned in to ‘ecodense’ housing (if it is needed), or a public park, or it could be reforested, or a school could be built, or a local lake/reservoir could be dug there, or even large public garden(s) or orchards could be created, and so on and so forth. The possibilities are literally wide open, because obviously anything is better put in the place of ugly, blighted, and abandoned buildings or old factories.

The main point of this process of ‘constructive destruction’ is to remove as many of the now useless buildings and abandoned eyesores which were built in the past but which now are worthless and serve no real purpose whatsoever — in doing this we would in turn create millions of new jobs merely by cleaning up the hideous industrial wreckage of the past. There are plenty of new ways in which almost all of these blighted areas could be reused, and many people in the local areas where these abandoned buildings or neglected sites are located would certainly have many ideas for things which could be created or put in their place.

The living patterns of many ‘advanced’ nations are going to have to undergo a major shift sometime in the near-future. The lifestyle of far too many people in the current age is entirely unreasonable, unhinged, foolish, hedonistic, shallow, and unsustainable.

We clearly consume far too many resources and as a result produce far too much waste, constantly stripping the Earth of its (finite) bounty and returning to it nothing but tons upon tons of trash, refuse, sewage, pollution, and other waste on a daily basis. Like an insidious parasite, we are draining far too much from our gracious host (Earth) and giving almost nothing back in return, abusing our precious environment to seemingly no end.

Nothing could be more ridiculous than destroying the very thing which is the basis or vessel of your life or the life of your species – yet that is what humankind is currently doing, and it has to soon cease and begin to reverse itself as much as possible.

Social (dis)organization has currently reached unhealthy levels, and as a result we are seemingly powerless to begin reversing the dire socio-environmental situation. Rabid individualism, fanatical selfishness, and insatiable greed are out of control among far too many at this most critical juncture in history. Sadly this seems unlikely to change any time soon unless severe and draconian measures are taken to permanently unite people rather than endlessly divide them. A major factor in this is due to widespread disconnection/alienation from nature – this is clearly fueling widespread feelings of powerlessness, hopelessness, nihilism, ennui, and other social-ills.

The wholesale de-population of the countryside/rural-regions of many areas on Earth continues at an ever-quickening speed, and this is clearly causing the aforementioned social-ills to compound and worsen. The movement of more and more people away from the countryside and in to urban/suburban areas is actually making the overall social and environmental situation even more desperate, for we are merely super-concentrating the environmental devastation as well as further removing ourselves from the very basis and fount of our existence (the soil, the water, the sun, the clean air, food production, etc).

The subject of mass-dependency again bears mentioning here, because it is beyond dispute that urbanites are much more dependent in general than rural-dwellers due to the fact that nearly all things necessary for life (water, food, energy, etc) must be brought in to cities from the rural regions merely for the urbanites to continue to live the materially-abundant lives many of them have become accustomed to. As a result urban-areas (particularly the very large and densely populated urban/suburban conurbations) are quite obviously much more unsustainable, overconsumptive, and environmentally damaging in relation to their rural counterparts as a result will likely need to be scaled-down to levels that are more sustainable/clean in order to reduce the mostly deleterious effects that modern urban-living has on both the social as well as environmental basis of human existence and culture.

It is increasingly difficult to deny that humanity is spiraling out of control on multiple levels. As such, this website seeks to offer commentary on and possible solutions to the current socio-environmental crisis.

I particularly seek to provide a gathering place for links to other websites and/or pertinent research resources which are focused on the modern ‘green/sustainability movement,’ human/environmental sustainability, environmental conservation/protection, all aspects of environmental science, ecology, enviro-economics, ecopolitical issues, natural resources, simple living, agrarianism, localism, and a myriad of other related topics.

If you know of more good websites, books, or any other sources of information pertaining to environmental topics please put them in a comment here or in another post so that I can take a look and then possibly add them to the links section of this website if they prove informative and helpful.

Also, please don’t be shy in terms of criticizing the ideas contained on this website, as well as correcting the grammar, word usage, and/or stylistics of my writing if you catch mistakes. Any and all criticism is very helpful and is fully welcome here.

I’m adding the entire categorical structure of this website to this particular post (see directly below) so that readers can get a sense of what topics this blog will focus on.